Okay. My ears are still numb and throbbing from a couple of solid hours of the shrill stylings of "Wind" Motika, the frontman of Asheville's Cool Project and quite possibly another band called Shiva.
I went out with my neighbors to see a good friend of ours, Michele, perform some bellydancing. I was quite eager to see her in action since I know she spends a lot of time practicing and has taught bellydancing before. I usually see Michele busy rearing her two small boys, so I rarely see her artistic and expressive side. I jumped at the chance to see her perform and I was truly impressed.
Michele and 2 other dancers, Mizilca and Tina, performed numbers and sequences to coincide with the Cool Project's Travelling Shaman show. Many of the songs had themes of togetherness and peace and environmentalism and things you'd expect hippies to sing about. Mind you, I am not opposed to any sentiment that was expressed this evening. I just found nothing about Wind's overbearing voice effective whatsoever in enhancing these viewpoints and/or beliefs.
In fact, I found his singing so piercing, jarring and painfully resonant on my eardrums that I actually wanted to shirk my sense of stewardship for this planet and my fellow man and just effing burn things. Maybe his microphone was all the way loud or something.
His over-the-top theatrics didn't help either. Waving his arms around like he was showing off a giant, invisible beach ball, or explaining obesity to the Maasai, real slow-like. I'm sure he thought he was just being artistic, but I've seen fire and brimstone preachers lose potential converts the very same way. It's like when pop stars do elaborate dance numbers to hide (or emphasize) the fact that they can't sing and have no real message anyway.
Thing is, Wind and his band do indeed have a message. I mean, kinda. They sung songs about the 4 elements and various, loose spiritual aspects thereof. To be honest the words to the songs were quite tepid, aside from the Peter Gabriel covers they did. Wind opened with a singing telegram-esque positive acknowledgment that we were all right here, right now, sharing an experience. Yep, we sure were. Toss in a few eastern-philosophy sounding words and I think the only clear "message" conveyed was that we were being performed to by new agers. Hey, I'm game.
Lyrics aside, all of the performers had some great skills. There was Sherman Hoover on the keyboards and backup vocals. He and Wind did a great job harmonizing and his skills set up effective, esoteric backdrops of sound for the dancers. J Bird on the "stick" (it looks like a guitar without a sound box) and drummer Jeff Schmitt were excellent. Wind himself played several different bamboo flutes and exhibited true, honest talent. I just couldn't take his voice or his "televangelistic" voguing.
I'm like, Bring out the dancers some more already! I think the bellydancers were effectively downplayed when they should have been the main draw. Each of the dancers made her own costumes, and there were several changes throughout the performance. As a person who sews, I was impressed by this extra show of dedication to the dancers' craft.
The three dancers opened with an interpretation of the four elements. As the show went on, each dancer performed a piece according to an element. Michele's was Earth, and she incorporated themes of the matriarchal bonobo apes and Salisa Gaia, a Mother Earth figure. Then all three dancers performed what I understood to be an air elemental dance about angels. That one was my favorite piece. The dancers closed the show with a really intricate piece wherein each of them used a ball of yarn to convey togetherness. The audience was encircled by the strands by the end of the performance.
Now I'd be truly unfair if I didn't point out some of the good Wind is doing in the world. One of his passions is the very Bonobo ape from Michele's performance, which he works to protect via the Bonobo Initiative. It is always good to see someone use his or her skills for a selfless purpose. I just wish he had been a bit more selfless with his stage time, gave it up for the dancers, and emptied his lungs exclusively into his bamboo flutes (at which he's quite skilled) instead of into his microphone.
Because Michele's performances were distributed throughout the entire show, we stayed for the whole thing. We quickly fled just as the crowd was pitter pattering out a few polite claps, which Wind and the Cool Project interpreted as an Encore summons. They did Peter Gabriel's IN YOUR EYES. And to their defence, perhaps it was the Doppler effect casting the ugly warbles upon the performance as we fled, and not the lead vocals.
In all, I'm so fortunate to know my surprising neighbor and friend Michele and I look forward to knowing her also as an abstract thinker and an artist. I'm afraid so many "moms" get unfairly categorized without having their whole nature and realm of talents appreciated. I shall try not to make that mistake in the future.
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